Augmented reality systems that overlay virtual content onto the real world are becoming increasingly popular. A user looking through their phone's camera might see a monster, a baseball player, or a movie character overlaid onto the background of real-world objects and geographic features in the camera's range. Augmented reality systems display overlaid content in highly location-based ways, meaning that a user on one street corner may see a different virtual object than a user at a different street corner only a block away. While some of these virtual objects may be simple two-dimensional images or low-resolution three-dimensional objects, others may include high-resolution images or even videos. Delivering high-definition content seamlessly to mobile devices in a variety of locations may pose many challenges that are not adequately addressed by existing infrastructure and systems.
Traditional systems for delivering high-resolution content to mobile devices may suffer from high latency as large amounts of data move slowly through sprawling networks. High latency may be acceptable for some applications, but augmented reality applications may greatly benefit from virtual objects appearing quickly after a user interacts with a trigger in order to maintain verisimilitude or relevance. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for delivering augmented reality content.